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Vogue Italia’s Rascist Haute Mess?

Vogue Italia’s Haute Mess editorial inspired by drag queens have come under serious fire. Steven Miesel shot Joan Smalls, Coco Rocha and Jessica Stam wearing over the top outfits styled by Lori Goldenstein, Painted by pat Mc Grath parading through grocery stores and fast food chains. One of the biggest complaints are that they look “ghetto fabulous” and seems to be depicting American sterotypes.

This is beyond despicable, it’s almost bordering on disgusting. Out of all of the “Haute Mess” archetypes to choose from they feature a single one, Ghetto. As white women they look absolutely ridiculous esp Daphne and Wixy. If I was black I would be offended and I usually don’t give a damn about these kind of things. I believe that this is an insensitive parody of African American women. Franca misunderstanding the concept is one thing but Meisel is American, he should know better.

Just_10 felt the issue was in the execution:

The concept itself isn’t disturbing; it could have been an exquisite homage to the absolute confidence and creativity of those women. But the haphazard manner in which this was executed makes it read like “upper middle class white stereotype of how poor black women present themselves in public”, which leads to a far different execution than if there was actual investigation into why these women present themselves in this way. The colors, the brands, the styles are all chosen for specific reasons, not this random hodgepodge of ghetto stereotypes Meisel presents to us here. And then the babies and references to single motherhood, and the malt liquor? LOL…

And someone from the Tumblr Rubyshimmer (which we found thanks to an anonymous tipster) posted this followed by the caption “Anyone who says they don’t see why this is racist can kiss my black ass.”

This probably wasn’t the best execution but I think the models look better than the real people (see nowaygirl photos below). However, is imitation not the best form of flattery? Commenter’s need to realize that the real people this editorial is said to depict think that they look fine hence why they walked outside the house like that. I also highly doubt that they consider themselves “ghetto fabulous” and would be bothered to know that others did. I think if they saw their hairstyles in this magazine it wouldn’t faze them. But this makes me wonder if this was a black magazine would people still be complaining? How about if it was a black magazine using all black or white models would it still be considered disgusting or art? [Fashionista]